Page:The Tourist's California by Wood, Ruth Kedzie.djvu/84

 62 THE TOURIST'S CALIFORNIA and one Chinese. The inter-racial tastes of the adolescent city and its opulence resulted in a light- heartedness and love of entertainment which has always been characteristic of San Francisco. Among the notable performers who visited the city within a few years after the first influx of the argonauts were Keene, Barrett, Forrest and Edwin Booth. What early scenes attended even so sim- ple a procedure as buying the tickets ! The weigh- ing of dust, the wrangles over a grain or two, the clamouring of impatient voices behind the scru- pulous one, the scramble for seats. . . . And to what mobs did those mummers of the 50's play lawless as they were emotional, exclama- tory, rough-booted and primal, it is not diffi- cult to imagine the incidents of their approval or denunciation. The San Francisco stage has witnessed the first successes of probably more singers and actors, both American and foreign, than any city in the coun- try outside of New York. Even this exception San Franciscans may question. It was here that the brilliant era of Madame Modjeska's ca- reer began when she was engaged to play in the old California Theatre where John McCullough was lessee and manager. This house, which has passed into tradition, was the scene of the city's greatest dramatic events, just as the Grand and the Tivoli sponsored opera.